Oregon Trail Migration

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Oregon Trail Migration Felicia Mobley, 7th period “Imagine the ocean, when the waves are rolling mountains high, becoming solid and covered with beautiful green grass and you have some faint idea of it.” This is how Rebecca Ketcham described a Nebraskan stretch of the Oregon Trail in May 1853. Between 1841 and 1860, tens of thousands of pioneers came over the Oregon Trail, the greatest migration in recorded history. A 2,000 mile journey, beginning in Independence, Missouri and cutting through Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and ending in Oregon City, Oregon, the Oregon Trail was a tough challenge. These pioneers had their reasons for taking on such a challenge, however. No single reason explains this vast westward movement; a variety of motives contributed to it. The biggest push factor for the migrants was living space. In the mid-nineteenth century, the states of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee had experiences two- and threefold population increases. Many of the people living in these areas began to feel hemmed in by neighbors living a mile or two away. Some believed that Oregon would offer them a better life, a place where they could make their fortune. For others, the mere promise of adventure was incentive enough to move west. Pure and simple patriotism also motivated a great many who joined the Oregon movement. The Oregon Territory was claimed equally by both the United States and Great Britain. However, England dominated the region economically. In an effort to claim the territory peaceably, the United States encouraged its citizens to settle there, appealing to their sense of nationalism as well as offering incentives in the form of land subsidies. The government told citizens it was their “Manifest Destiny”, their God-given right and obligation, to settle the west and bring the American culture to the area. The Oregon Trail
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